Yesterday evening I saw the DVD-movie about Christopher McCandless made by Sean Penn after the book written by Jon Krakauer. I read that book in the 90-ies and was deeply touched by it then. The movie is as good if not better, which is not often the case with filmed books, but here I have to say that Sean Penn succeeded.

About Chris (failed?) adventure one can say a lot of things. I have a lot of thought, about ideals, about psychology, about love to nature, about the searching after identity... On internet there is a lot of material, not at least on youtube where someone have filmed his visits to the bus. The comments under goes in the usual malevolentic jargong where anonymous prics finds pleasure in butchering everyone who do not think the same.

On Wikipedia one can read that likely young Chris did not die from poisoning anyway, but simple starvation. The autopsy did not show any signs of that and the potatoseeds were not poisonous. But how knows? maybe it was a combination of several reasons and when he later was too thin the body becomes extra sensitive.

I admire the family who decided after all to allow the movie to be made. It must have been extremely hard for them. He left them without writing one word to anyone of them. Not even to his sister who was the one who understood him the best. Selfish? or did he not dare to as he was afraid they would make him change his mind? Was that why he left to Alaska head over heels, to be able to contact them after he had proved himself? Speculations, we will never know.

There is also a documentary made about his travel through Amerika.Ron Lamothe ad read the book and travelled in 2006 in the footsteps of Chris. A lot of interviews with different people who had met Chris or were touched by his destiny in other ways casts a new light on his life.